Friday, March 11

I often advise: "don't tweet and drink." Posting on Facebook, Twitter or other social media platforms while inebriated can lead to serious embarrasment. In many cases, it can lead to getting fired. As you know, tweets can be deleted, but once something is on the internet, it's there forever. Not only does Google archive tweets, but the National Archives logs every tweet, every day, into the Library of Congress archives.
In the past two months we've seen representitives for major brands tweeting on their own accounts, and accidentally tweeting their "playful" tweets from their employers accounts.
The F-bomb was dropped from the official @ChryslerAutos account on Wednesday. Presumably after a long commute an employee of Chrysler Group's social media agency posted the fullowing tweet:

The social media agency for Chrysler, New Media Strategies (NMS) quickly deleted the tweet, but not before it caught on and was reTweeted by the Twitter community.Chrysler apologized on Twitter and postsed a somewhat old school retraction on their blog.
Last month, the American Red Cross Twitter account had a similar situation:

Although the tweet was summarily deleted within the hour and tweeted an apology. They then followed up with a blog post with apologies and a screenshots of Twitter member's humorous responses. Seems the Red Cross is well equipped to handle even the most simple disasters as well. By some grace, this employee didn't loose her job.
Mistakes like these are only too easy to make. There is a simple solution to avoid this for social media professionals. Tweet your personal tweets from one platform (Seesmic? Tweetdeck?) and tweet your clients from another, more powerful platform. Simple. Be adept at your work and just do it!